The writer in Chamber's Encyclopedia, in speaking of Colombia, also says:
The geology of the country is very extraordinary. "Everywhere," we are told, "are found traces of stupendous cataclysms and a disarrangement and intermixture of primitive and sedimentary rocks, which assume to put all classification at defiance."[[17]]
Professor Winchell says:
We are in the midst of great changes, and are scarcely conscious of it. We have seen worlds in flames, and have felt a comet strike the earth. We have seen the whole coast of South America lifted up bodily ten or fifteen feet and let down again in an hour. We have seen the Andes sink 220 feet in seventy years. * * * Vast transpositions have taken place in the coastline of China. The ancient capital, located, in all probability, in an accessible position near the centre of the empire, has now become nearly surrounded by water, and its site is on the peninsula of Corea. * * * There was a time when the rocky barriers of the Thracian Bosphorus gave way and the Black Sea subsided. It had covered a vast area in the north and east. Now this area became drained and was known as the ancient Lectonia: it is now the prairie region of Russia, and the granary of Europe.[[18]]
Referring to Donnelly again:
The earthquake of 1783 in Iceland destroyed 9,000 people out of a population of 50,000; twenty villages were consumed by fire or inundated by water, and a mass of lava thrown out "greater than the bulk of Mont Blanc."[[19]]
Professor Lyell, referring to the great earthquake which occurred on the island of Java, near the mountain of Galung Gung, on the 8th of October, 1822, says:
A loud explosion was heard, the earth shook, and immense columns of hot water and boiling mud, mixed with burning brimstone, ashes, and lapilli, of the size of nuts, were projected from the mountain like a water-spout, with such prodigious violence that large quantities fell beyond the river Tandoi, which is forty miles distant. * * * The first eruption lasted nearly five hours; and on the following days the rain fell in torrents, and the rivers densely charged with mud, deluged the country far and wide. At the end of four days (October 12), a second eruption occurred, more violent than the first, in which hot water and mud were again vomited, and great blocks of basalt were thrown to the distance of seven miles from the volcano. There was at the same time a violent earthquake, the face of the mountain was utterly changed, its summits broken down, and one side, which had been covered with trees, became an enormous gulf in the form of a semicircle. Over 4,000 persons were killed and 114 villages destroyed.[[20]]
The following account of seismic disturbances is taken from Donnelley's work Atlantis.
The Gulf of Santorin, in the Grecian Archipelago, has been for two thousand years a scene of active volcanic operations. Pliny informs us that in the year 186 B. C. the island of "Old Kaimeni," or the Sacred Isle, was lifted up from the sea; and in A. D. 19 the island of "Thia" (the Divine) made its appearance. In A. D. 1573 another island was created, called "the small sunburnt island." * * * A recent examination of these islands shows that the whole mass of Santorin has sunk, since its projection from the sea, over 1,200 feet.[[21]]
The fort and villages of Sindree, on the eastern arm of the Indus, above Luckput, was submerged in 1819 by an earthquake, together with a tract of country 2,000 square miles in extent.[[22]]
In April, 1815, one of the most frightful eruptions recorded in history occurred in the province of Tomboro, in the island of Sumbawa, about two hundred miles from the eastern extremity of Java. It lasted from April 5 to July of that year; but was most violent on the 11th and 12th of July. The sound of the explosion was heard nearly one thousand miles. Out of a population of 12,000 in the province of Tomboro, only twenty-six individuals escaped. "Violent whirlwinds carried up men, horses, and cattle into the air, tore up the largest trees by the roots, and covered the whole sea with floating timber." (Raffles' History of Java, vol. I, 38.) The ashes darkened the air; "the floating cinders to the westward of Sumatra formed, on the 12th of April, a mass two feet thick and several miles in extent, through which ships with difficulty forced their way." The darkness in daytime was more profound than the blackest night. "The town called Tomboro, on the west side of Sumbawa, was overflowed by the sea, which encroached upon the shore, so that the water remained permanently eighteen feet deep in places where there was land before. The area covered by the convulsion was 1,000 English miles in circumference. "In the island of Amboyna, in the same month and year, the ground opened, threw out water, and then closed again." (Raffles' History of Java, vol. I, p. 52.)
But it is at the point of the European coast nearest to the site of Atlantis at Lisbon that the most tremendous earhquake of modern times has occurred. On the 1st of November, 1775, a sound was heard underground, and immediately afterward a violent shock threw down the greater part of the city. In six minutes 60,000 persons perished. A great concourse of people had collected for safety upon a new quay, built entirely of marble; but suddenly it sank down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. * * * The water where the quay went down is now 600 feet deep. The area covered by this earthquake was very great. Humboldt says that a portion of the earth's surface, four times as great as the size of Europe, was simultaneously shaken. It extended from the Baltic to the West Indies, and from Canada to Algiers. At eighty leagues from Morocco the ground opened and swallowed a village of 10,000 inhabitants, and closed again over them.[[23]]